Sorcerer & Delta Green

[DannyK]

"Atrocity Archive" is a good romp & lots of fun, even if not as chilling as Stross' "A Colder War" (which is possibly the best piece of Lovecraftian fiction in existence, IMO.)  Stross' short stories (in Rust) and Singularity Sky (an SF novel) are also fun.  :)

Yeah, "A Colder War" rocks.  And it's online for free!
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm

But it may be unplayably bleak as a setting -- nobody wants to play "The Doctor Strangelove RPG".  

Your point about hope is interesting.  But how is that inimical to the game Sorcerer?

[Mike Holmes]

Ah, so they do have demons. All good then. :-)

I can see the Necronomicon being a demon with it's spells the powers.

Mike

[JamesSterrett]

Danny - Sorry, I was confusing.  "Hope" is not inimical to Sorceror as a stat; the problem I had was with labelling/tracking Sanity or Taint or some related stat instead of Hope.

In essence, I was looking for a "thing to track" that I felt would fit better, and thought Hope was the answer.  (In fact, my first answer was "Despair", but that's difficult to make work as a descending stat.  :)  So, of course, the opposite of Despair is Hope, which makes more sense as a "count down to zero and extinction" stat.  :)  )


Is it true that nobody wants to play the Dr Strangelove RPG?  I agree that the endstate of A Colder War is unplayable (the story is, well, *over*.  :)  )

However, this is one factor lying at the root of the endless debates on the value of CoC as an RPG....  I *can* see the appeal of playing a character whom I know will ultimately fail: exploring the theme of the value of sacrifice and struggle against impossible odds, and doing so from a variety of motivations.  Others look at this and say "You cannot win" (true!) "and therefore it is pointless" (but is it?)  Those who find the unwinnable situation pointless won't see the point in the theme.

Equally, the overall setting of A Colder War/The Atrocity Archive is certainly playable (and can be spun towards both the "you cannot win" and the "you can win" ends of the spectrum.)